Carbon Trading for Achieving SDG 13: Climate Action and its consequences on developing countries.

The paper will study how Carbon Trading contributes to the achievement of SDG 13: Climate Action. As a complicated market topic that is presented as a solution to climate change, at the very end my personal opinion will suggest Carbon Capturing and Storage instead of Carbon Trading as a means to avoid over-commodification of our planetary boundaries. We are facing one of the most significant challenges against our humankind that has the potential to cause severe disruptions to the ecosystems and humans all over the globe: climate change. A global crisis of unprecedented scale and severity is possessing overwhelming evidence for all citizens to take it seriously, with rising sea levels and temperatures as well as extreme weather events that influence us without looking if one country has contributed to the climate change more than the other, in contrast those who had the least contribution are the ones paying the most in facing the consequences. As I have pursued my master’s degree in Local Development, my interest in environmental issues have grown. Beyond its popularity in our present time, my personal interest in learning about climate change policies stems from a very simple perspective: humans will simply be extinct if we destroy our planet. This is beyond any political acclimation, any economic preference, any race, nation, gender, or religion. None of it will matter if the planet we live on becomes inhabitable. Our investments for the future, our dream for our generation simply becomes null and void if we fail to provide them the right to live. Unfortunately, human myopia is very strong when it comes to considering any risks that lay in the future. The same concept is demonstrated in the COVID-19 Pandemic. The latest example of the problems with myopia can be found in the Covid-19 Pandemic that erupted in 2020. The impact of the pandemic showed that the governments must be prepared for alternatives to our uncertain future (Dixon, 2020). The focus on the current problems worldwide led to a definite lack of investment and planning for long-term issues. The human tendency to dismiss possible future threats is perfectly overlapping with short-termism in democracies and results in unpreparedness. The failure of multiple democracies to prepare for pandemics increased the death toll and put health care services under stress. We must be aware that this pandemic was not first of its kind, in fact the US Director of National Intelligence stated in 2019 that ‘the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support’ (Unites States Annual Threat Assesment, 2019). This is a clear theme of ‘democratic myopia’ – short sightedness of democratic decision-making. The warning signs were present and announced, however due to the threat residing in the future, it was not deemed important enough to prepare for. One could observe the COVID-19 crisis as an accelerated learning experiment about how to cope with climate change (Botzen, Duijndam, & Van Beukering, 2020). One major difference would be that COVID-19 was mostly unexpected though certain scientists declare it was predicted, it took the world up by a storm and changed the way our society functions at a very high pace. Climate change has been predicted and debated for decades, in contrast to COVID-19 Pandemic however, it is not a fast-paced change but a slow and steady inclination of consequences to our livelihoods. As climate change has gained much popularity over the years, there are many international and national policies that have been created to tackle its consequences.